"Serve Canada with Men Like These": Masculinity, "Peacekeeping," and National Identity in Cold War Canada, 1956-1959

This paper explores the ways in which the construction of militarized masculinities in Cold War Canadian media reflected the hegemonic masculinities and broader social trends of the period. This paper focuses specifically on the recruiting materials produced for and by the Canadian Army between 1956 and 1959, the time of the Suez Canal Crisis and the beginnings of “Canadian peacekeeping.” Through the mobilization of modern and anti-modern masculine identities attached to hegemonic and idealized Cold War Canadian masculinities, the Army created the image of the “Modern Warrior” to portray itself as an occupation and culture for “real Canadian men.” This identity simultaneously corresponded with Canada’s new “peacekeeping” identity. By presenting certain images of Canadian manhood as the “ideal” Canadian identity and by associating this “ideal” masculinity with military service, the Army’s recruitment advertisements conflated Cold War rhetoric of service, defence, national citizenship, cultural belonging, and “ideal” ethnicity with a Canadian identity available only to a specific (and often exclusive) segment of society. Because military service has long been considered the crux of citizenship, these advertisements (re)entrenched patterns of middle-class, heterosexual, Anglo- Saxon masculine power and dominance in a time of social uncertainty and cultural anxiety through the reaffirmation of this group’s “privilege” to serve the nation.

The Gentleman-Scholar at Home: Domesticity, Masculinity, and Civility in Dutch Seventeenth-Century Genre Painting

This dissertation examines the gentleman-scholar depicted at home in Dutch seventeenth-century genre paintings, focusing primarily on art created in the Northern Netherlands from the 1630s through the 1670s. The methodological approach is art historical but also pertains to history of architecture, history of dress, and gender studies. Employing the framework of the 'Ages of Man', this thesis investigates three related pictorial themes: the student, the scholar in his prime, and the aged scholar. Variations of male scholarly figures and the accoutrements of the study have a long history in Europe. Prototypical sources include religious history paintings of learned hermit-saints; artistic interest in the allegorical Saturnine persona; portraits of famous scholars; and the iconography of scholarly melancholy implied through vanitas allusions in portraiture and genre paintings. While the majority of Dutch genre paintings pertain to themes of women, male domestic routines form a small but important subset of this imagery and have not been studied. By the 1640s, this subject is readily identified by his setting, clothing, and actions. The ubiquity of scholarly attributes, such as books and globes, paired with the wearing of scholarly robes suggest the merits of intellectual curiosity and the privileges of studying as a pastime and designating a room as a study (studeerkamer). Distinct themes in genre also imply the challenges and rewards of scholarly activity pursued in concert with masculine civic and familial duty. Central to the development of this pictorial theme were: the innovative treatment of learned men by Rembrandt and his circle; the fijnschilder subjects of Dou; and the practice of amateur study by elite men, as suggested by the art of Vermeer. As this dissertation reveals, this convention did not grow to be consistent across the Northern Netherlands, nor was artistic interest limited to university towns. Rather, the larger relevance of scholars in Dutch society is evident in visual and literary sources. The domesticity of this figure in genre painting suggests that scholars mediated between an active and a contemplative life. Societal respect was garnered for scholars through their balance of familial and social duties with the honorable pastime of scholarly leisure.

Cultural Politics of Resilience in Kingston, Jamaica

Recently, resilience has become a catchall solution for some of the world’s most pressing ecological, economic and social problems. This dissertation analyzes the cultural politics of resilience in Kingston, Jamaica by examining them through their purported universal principles of adaptation and flexibility. On the one hand, mainstream development regimes conceptualize resilience as a necessary and positive attribute of economies, societies and cultures if we are to survive any number of disasters or disturbances. Therefore, in Jamaican cultural and development policy resilience is championed as both a means and an end of development. On the other hand, critics of resilience see the new rollout of resilience projects as deepening neoliberalism, capitalism and new forms of governmentality because resilience projects provide the terrain for new forms of securitization and surveillance practices. These scholars argue that resilience often forecloses the possibilities to resist that which threatens us. However, rather than dismissing resilience as solely a sign of domination and governmentality, this dissertation argues that resilience must be understood as much more ambiguous and complex, rather than within binaries such as subversion vs. neoliberal and resistance vs. resilience. Overly simplistic dualities of this nature have been the dominant approach in the scholarship thus far. This dissertation provides a close analysis of resilience in both multilateral and Jamaican government policy documents, while exploring the historical and contemporary production of resilience in the lives of marginalized populations. Through three sites within Kingston, Jamaica—namely dancehall and street dances, WMW-Jamaica and the activist platform SO((U))L HQ—this dissertation demonstrates that “resilience” is best understood as an ambiguous site of power negotiations, social reproduction and survival in Jamaica today. It is often precisely this ambiguous power of ordinary resilience that is capitalized on and exploited to the detriment of vulnerable groups. At once demonstrating creative negotiation and reproduction of colonial capitalist social relations within the realms of NGO, activist work and cultural production, this dissertation demonstrates the complexity of resilience. Ultimately, this dissertation draws attention to the importance of studying spaces of cultural production in order to understand the power and limits of contemporary policy discourses and political economy. 

#DressCodePM & Re-Framing The Niqab: News Sources, Hashtag Activism, and Media Representation

This thesis originates from my interest in exploring how minorities are using social media to talk back to mainstream media. This study examines whether hashtags that trend on Twitter may impact how news stories related to minorities are covered in Canadian media. The Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper stated the niqab was “rooted in a culture that is anti-women” on 10 March 2015. The next day #DressCodePM trended in response to the PM’s niqab remarks. Using network gatekeeping theory, this study examines the types of sources quoted in the media stories published on 10 and 11 March 2015. The study’s goal is to explore whether using tweet quotes leads to the representation of a more diverse range of news sources. The study compares the types of sources quoted in stories that covered Harper’s comments without mentioning #DressCodePM versus stories that mention #DressCodePM. This study also uses Tuen A. van Dijk’s methodology of asking “who is speaking, how often and how prominently?” in order to examine whose voices have been privileged and whose voices have been marginalized in covering the niqab in Canadian media from the 1970s and until the days following the PM’s remarks. Network gatekeeping theory is applied in this study to assess whether the gated gained more power after #DressCodePM trended. The case study’s findings indicates that Caucasian male politicians were predominantly used as news sources in covering stories related to the niqab for the past 38 years in the Globe and Mail. The sourcing pattern of favouring politicians continued in Canadian print and online media on 10 March 2015 following Harper’s niqab comments. However, ordinary Canadian women, including Muslim women, were used more often than politicians as news sources in the stories about #DressCodePM that were published on 11 March 2015. The gated media users were able to gain power and attract Canadian Media’s attention by widely spreading #DressCodePM. This study draws attention to the lack of diversity of sources used in Canadian political news stories, yet this study also shows it is possible for the gated media users to amplify their voices through hashtag activism.

Fleshing Out and Losing Flesh: The Decomposing Corpse as Narrative Object in American Hardboiled Detective Fiction

This dissertation examines the corpse as an object in and of American hardboiled detective fiction written between 1920 and 1950. I deploy several theoretical frames, including narratology, body-as-text theory, object relations theory, and genre theory, in order to demonstrate the significance of objects, symbols, and things primarily in the clever and crafty work of Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961) and Raymond Chandler (1888-1959), but also touching on the writings of their lesser known accomplices. I construct a literary genealogy of American hardboiled detective fiction originating in the writings of Edgar Allan Poe, compare the contributions of classic or Golden Age detective fiction in England, and describe the socio-economic contexts, particularly the predominance of the “pulps,” that gave birth to the realism of the Hardboiled School. Taking seriously Chandler’s obsession with the art of murder, I engage with how authors pre-empt their readers’ knowledge of the tricks of the trade and manipulate their expectations, as well as discuss the characteristics and effect of the inimitable hardboiled style, its sharpshooting language and deadpan humour. Critical scholarship has rarely addressed the body and figure of the corpse, preferring to focus instead on the machinations of the femme fatale, the performance of masculinity, or the prevalence of violence. I cast new light on the world of hardboiled detective fiction by dissecting the corpse as the object that both motivates and de-composes (or rots away from) the narrative that makes it signify. I treat the corpse as an inanimate object, indifferent to representation, that destabilizes the integrity and self-possession, as well as the ratiocination, of the detective who authors the narrative of how the corpse came to be. The corpse is all deceptive and dangerous surface rather than the container of hidden depths of life and meaning that the detective hopes to uncover and reconstruct. I conclude with a chapter that is both critical denouement and creative writing experiment to reveal the self-reflexive (and at times metafictional) dimensions of hardboiled fiction. My dissertation, too, in the manner of hardboiled fiction, hopes to incriminate my readers as much as enlighten them.

Governmentality gone wild: How the separation of sex workers from 'communities' contributes to violence against sex workers

Sex workers are members of our communities, whether they are local or national communities. In law, mainstream media representations, and research sex workers are positioned as outside of or in opposition to communities. Even within marginalized communities sex workers are excluded when appeals to respectability politics are made. In this thesis I analyze three analytic sites from three areas of social life. The first chapter performs a textual analysis of The Bedford Decision (2013) and the resulting Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act (2014) as an examination of law. The second chapter is an analysis of filmic discourse on community, sex workers, and violence in the mainstream film London Road (2015) as an examination of mainstream media. The third chapter draws upon empirical research, i.e. in-depth interviews with three current and former sex workers in Ottawa, Canada and analyzes the transcripts using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) to center how sex workers’ understanding of their work, community, and the laws and policies that are supposed govern and protect them. In my preface and conclusion I discuss some of the ethical dilemmas I encountered while conducting this research. My findings suggest that sex workers are being positioned and understood as outside of communities in ways that contribute to violence against sex workers. The implications of this research suggest that people who speak in the name of communities—communities in the sense of local neighborhood communities, activist communities, and national communities—need to recognize that sex workers are part of their communities and be accountable to ensuring they are treated as members. Researchers who conduct research on sex work and sex workers need to be accountable to their participants and the impacts their research may have on laws and policies. Sex workers are an over-researched population yet their voices are largely misappropriated or silenced in popular research and policy debates.

From Where Do We Teach? Potential Positions in Public Education

This thesis is a conceptual examination of the positions from which we teach in public education. As it is philosophical in nature, it takes no qualitative or quantitative data. It offers a review of selected relevant literature and an analysis of personal and professional experience, with the intent to pose critical questions about teaching and learning. The framework of this thesis represents the following contentions: First, from its inception, public schooling served capital by preparing skilled labour for emerging industrial markets. This history is the hegemonic shadow that hangs over public education today. Second, movements toward the standardization of funding, curriculum, and evaluation support the further commodification of public schooling. The “accountability” that standardization offers, the “back to basics” that it aims for, is counter to the potential that public education might critically inform citizens and seek social justice. Third, movements toward the privatization of public schooling under the guise of “choice” and “mobility”, brought on by manufactured crisis, serve only to widen socio-economic inequities as capitalist neoliberal interests seek profit in both the product of public schools and in schooling itself. If we recognize and understand the power of public education to inform vast numbers of citizens who will, in turn, either maintain or reform society, we must ask: What do we want public education to be? What are the effects of continuing down historically conventional and increasingly standardized paths? What do progressive pedagogies offer? How might teachers destandardize their pedagogy and pursue equitable opportunities for marginalized students? How might students name themselves and their world, that they might play a part in its reimagining? For whom do we teach, and under what conditions? From where do we teach, and why? For educators to ask these questions, and to employ what they discover, will necessitate taking substantial risks. It will necessitate taking a stand and cannot be done alone. Teachers must seek out the collaboration of their students. They must offer students the time and the space to find their own voices, to create their own selves, and to envision previously uncharted paths on which we might walk together.